Welcome to

the Garlic Gallery

These are the 11 varieties of Asbury Village Farm hard and softneck garlic grown this season.

We harvested a healthy crop in 2011 with firm bulbs showing the best color ever pulled from our soils. The 2012 season will benefit from the vigorous buckwheat crop (see below) sown in August and turned under by Farmer Steve just after the prolific bloom of delicate white flowers.

The AVF collection started in the fall of 2002, when we bought seed stock from Filaree Farm. Tom recommended two Rocamboles, Killarney Red and Carpathian, as well as a Purple Stripe called Persian Star. These are hardneck garlics (sativuum ophioscorodon). They all grew well in our gravelly loam and Zone VI temperatures. In 2004 we ordered the Chinese Purple and Brown Tempest, and bought some Porcelain from Billie and Skip Fairman in Nazareth, PA.

Reading about softneck garlics (sativuum sativuum) and their longkeeping properties, I asked Tom for a suggestion and we planted the Inchelium Red in 2005. It proved to be remarkably vigorous. Here are some observations about each of our eleven garlics:

The Rocamboles

I have had a hard time distinguishing between the Killarney Red and the Carpathian. Sometimes I can see a little color difference in the stalks. This season the Killarney Red proved true to its name with some bulb wrappers completely reddish purple.

The Purple Stripes

The Persian Star, although not large in size, is consistently hardy and hot. The Brown Tempest is a Glazed Purple Stripe and in our soil produces a handsome, dusky brown, medium size bulb. In 2009 we added a generic Purple Stripe from Filaree. This season, all three varieties exhibited gorgeous striations of purple hues in varying degrees of coverage. Our most colorful harvest!

Porcelain

Fairman White constitutes over 50% of our crop. This vigorous and consistent garlic has been supplied by Skip and Billie Fariman since 2003. We are also growing out the German Extra Hardy and a Music acquired from Phillips Farm in Milford, New Jersey. Multiple seasons may be required for newly introduced varieties to adapt to our soil and microclimatic conditions.

Inchelium Red

These bright white Artichoke bulbs can get large. The three inch diameter specimen I entered in the 2006 Warren County Farmer's Fair won first place. Their stalks fall over just before harvest and make amply clear the term softneck.

Chinese Purple This Artichoke sub-variety is my favorite. It needed coaxing to adapt to our growing conditions, but it now performs very nicely with the most amazing purple splotching on the wrappers. The stalks are weak and produce few scapes (more about these later). I think of it as sort of a hermaphrodite, half hardneck and half softneck. In storage, these guys want to grow really early and seem to be the first to sprout. Likewise they are the first to emerge in the spring (photo taken 2/28/11).

Nootka Rose
I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, not too far from the west coast of Vancouver Island, home to the Nootka First Nation. I was intrigued by the garlic of the same name in the Filaree Farms catalog and wanted to grow some for friends who live in the NW. This is an heirloom Silverskin (our first!) originally supplied by Steve Bensel on Waldron Island. In our first year of propagation, it yielded an astounding seven fold return on the planting stock and continues to produce admirably. It is our best storing garlic with little sign of dehydration through March. If you are careful in the timing of the harvest and remove the bulbs carefully from the soil, the outermost wrapper will reveal the blush of rose.

I have learned how critical harvest timing is. Since the wrappers can rot very quickly, getting the bulbs out of the ground should be done sooner rather than later. As a result, the crop reveals a lot more color because when you clean the bulbs you aren't peeling away the outer wrappers where the color resides.

Buckwheat (fagopyrum esculentum)

David Stern, director of the Garlic Seed Foundation, is a big advocate for using Buckwheat as a green manure for garlic production. Farmer Steve ordered seed and planted it into the 2012 AVF garlic beds on August 4. It was up about six inches on August 18 and then after Hurricane Irene passed, it blossomed into a profusion of white flowers standing about a foot tall.

According to Cornell University, Buckwheat ‘is a scavenger of phosphorus and calcium and mineralizes rock phosphate, making these nutrients available for later crops. Residue from the succulent buckwheat plants decomposes quickly.

Since nitrogen fixing legumes (fava, green beans and peas for our shareholders) were grown earlier this year on the future garlic beds, Steve explained that the buckwheat was ‘locking in’ that nitrogen. Our buckwheat crop was turned into the soil shortly after it flowered, and the decomposing biomass has contributed its own nutrient make up. You can also think of it as feeding the microbes! Next year, we expect to see fewer weeds and increased bulb size. Check back for updates

Strange Brew June, 2011 was the Home Stretch prior to harvest. In May we brewed a mean tea from Alfalfa Meal (nitrogen) and powdered kelp (potassium) and applied it with the backpack sprayer. These nutrients are absorbed through the pores or stomata of the leaves. Our Silverskin (Nootka Rose) showed the most noticeable result. Softnecks tend to droop and these guys perked right up after their second shot of this potent beverage. Refilling the backpack sprayer with Strange Brew   Strange Brew ingredients: Maxicrop Norwegian powdered kelp and Alfalfa meal

Like Baby Rhea (who was born on the Farm in February, 2011), the garlic takes nine months from planting to harvest. It's a long gestation. Since we did not mulch the crop this year we got to see the different rates of emergence of each variety. We also got to fight the artemesia and thistle population!

On September 24th and 25th, we attended the 2011 Hudson Valley Garlic Festival in Saugerties, NY. In 2010, 22,500 garlic lovers attended this event on Saturday alone. We particularly enjoy the Saturday night Grower’s Potluck, where we have been introduced to the fellowship of garlic fanatics and their secret recipes. To read more and see pictures, click here.

December 26, 2011

Care to comment? curt.rowell@gmail.com

Here are some Asbury Village Farm links from the past year that might be of interest:

CATCH UP WITH CHARLES AND MARY @ STOCKTON VILLAGE FARM now on Facebook.

Highlights from the 2010 PLOWING FROLIC (here)

...and to see John Bernaski's Tintypes go here